WASHINGTON (AP) - A Minneapolis FBI supervisor said in a pre-Sept. 11
conversation with headquarters that he wanted to prevent suspicious
student pilot Zacarias Moussaoui from flying a plane into the World Trade
Center, a congressional investigator testified Tuesday.

The supervisor said he had no reason to believe Moussaoui was planning
such an attack, but made the remark in a frustrated attempt to convince
headquarters that a special search warrant was needed to search
Moussaoui's computer, investigator Eleanor Hill told a House-Senate
committee investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.

Moussaoui is now accused of conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers to
commit terrorism, and Hill outlined the Minneapolis FBI's office's
repeated and unsuccessful efforts to convince headquarters that he was a
possible terrorist.

The supervisor told the committee staff he was "trying to get people at
FBI headquarters 'spun up' because he was trying to make sure that
Moussaoui 'did not take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade
Center,'" Hill testified.

Hill said the headquarters agent responded,
"That's not going to happen. We don't know he's a terrorist. You don't
have enough to show he is a terrorist."

The headquarters agent told the investigators he did not recall the
conversation.

Hill also said that a July 2001 memo by an FBI agent warning that Osama
bin Laden might send terrorists to the United States for flight training
was disregarded by headquarters, which was unaware officials previously
tried to identify Middle Eastern flight students in this country.

The investigator said the failure to connect the so-called Phoenix memo
with the arrest of Moussaoui a month later - and a general increase of
terrorist alerts - represented major intelligence failings before the
Sept. 11 attacks.

"No one will ever know whether a greater focus on the connection
between these events would have led to the unraveling of the Sept. 11
plot," said Hill.

(AP)
Members of the Joint Senate House Select Intelligence
Committee, listen on Capitol Hill Friday,...Full
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"But
clearly, it might have drawn greater attention to the possibility of a
terrorist attack in the United States, generated a heightened state of
alert regarding such attacks and prompted more aggressive investigation
and intelligence gathering," she said in a report for the House and Senate
intelligence committees.

The committees looked into the handling of the Phoenix memo and the
Moussaoui case as it held its fourth public hearing into the Sept. 11
attacks.

The Phoenix-based agent, Kenneth Williams, wrote a memo to his
superiors in Washington two months before the attacks, suggesting that
terrorists might be learning to fly commercial jetliners at U.S. flight
schools. He asked for a check of flight schools, but no checks were made.

Williams was not identified by name in the report and was to testify
later anonymously. As his own prepared testimony noted, his identity has
already been revealed in many news accounts of his memo, which was
disclosed earlier this year.

Hill said New York FBI personnel who reviewed the memo found it
"speculative and not particularly significant." They said they knew some
flight students were affiliated with bin Laden, she said, but believed
they were intended to fly goods and personnel in Afghanistan.

Hill
wrote that both Williams and the FBI agents in headquarters were unaware
that the FBI had received a report in 1998 that a terrorist organization
might be planning to bring students to the United States to train at
flight schools.

By November 2000, though, an analyst wrote a memo informing FBI offices
that he found no evidence of terrorists studying aviation and that further
investigation "is deemed imprudent" by FBI headquarters.

Agents involved in the Moussaoui case also were unaware of the Phoenix
memo and the earlier investigation.

Moussaoui was arrested by FBI agents in Minnesota on immigration
charges in August 2001 after a flight school instructor became suspicious
of his desire to learn to fly a commercial jet. FBI headquarters denied
agents' request to seek a warrant to search his computer. Moussaoui has
since been charged with conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks.

In his prepared testimony, a Minneapolis-based FBI agent blamed legal
restrictions, FBI headquarters and the circumstances of the case for
impeding a more aggressive investigation of Moussaoui before Sept. 11.

Lawmakers
have been meeting behind closed doors since June, but public hearings were
delayed until last week, partly because of questions about what
information could be revealed in the Moussaoui case.

The committees have also been clashing with the Bush administration
about whether it can reveal what intelligence about terrorist attacks was
disclosed to the White House before Sept. 11.

The administration doesn't want to reveal what the White House knew,
even if the intelligence has already been declassified.

On Tuesday, leaders of the committees again called on the White House
to allow the information to be disclosed, or explain why the information
should be kept secret.

House Minority Whip Nancy Pelosi, the leading Democrat on the House
Intelligence Committee, said the White House's failure to allow the
information to be disclosed "will undoubtedly further weaken public
confidence in the entire classification system."

"To classify for the wrong reasons, when security is not at stake, when
nothing of substance is really at stake, undermines the willingness of the
American people to put their faith and trust in the government," the
California Democrat said.

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